WEEKEND DRUG SHOOTINGS KILL 21 IN PUERTO RICO

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- In one of the most violent weekends in Puerto
Rico's history, 21 people were killed from Friday night to Monday morning
- -- most in drug-related shootings.

Puerto Rico police Superintendent Pierre Vivoni attributed the carnage to
power shifts among street dealers after thousands of recent arrests and a
battle about shrinking drug supplies caused by tighter security since the
Sept.. 11 terrorist attacks.

Drug Enforcement Administration officials said they have seen no evidence
of a slowdown in drug trafficking in Puerto Rico or to the mainland United
States. Vivoni disagrees.

In a twist, Vivoni pointed to his department's crime-fighting -- which he
thinks destabilized part of the island's underworld structure -- as a
factor that may have helped set off the killing spree.

About 460 of more than 3,000 arrests last week were drug-related. Officials
said that threw some trafficking spots into chaos, and violence skyrocketed
in disputes about turf and access to drugs.

Vivoni said his department did not put enough effort into controlling the
volatile situation among dealers, concentrating instead on restricting the
flow of drugs.

"This could have been foreseen, and we didn't do it and we're not here to
give excuses," he said. "I'm going to be evaluating this ... I'll make
whatever changes are necessary."

Vivoni said information he is getting from the streets and preliminary
investigations indicate 19 of the 21 deaths are drug-related.

He added that competition for drugs could become more intense after police
confiscated almost 1,760 pounds of cocaine being unloaded from a speedboat
Monday morning on the island's south coast. He said police will continue
trying to choke off the drug flow, while making a bigger effort to control
violence among criminals.

"I am not giving up. This is an unacceptable situation, and we're going to
attack it head on and firmly," Vivoni said.

For now, he is beefing up police patrols in the areas where most of the
blood was shed -- Carolina, Caguas and Bayamon, near San Juan, and the
Humacao sector on the island's southeastern tip.

Higher-ranking officers were brought in to supervise 12-hour shifts at
night, when most of the drug world violence is apt to occur. Vivoni is also
looking into changing the department's structure to avoid the lack of
coordination that he thinks kept the department from acting in time to
prevent the violence.

Most of the weekend's victims were shot in swift hits.

Angel C. Martinez Gonzalez, 22, was shot in the right cheek near his home
in the southern town of Santa Isabel Saturday afternoon by two men driving
by in a car.

Israel Rivera Calderon, 18, was shot as he was driving in the town of loiza
just east of San Juan on Friday night. Police found him in a pool of blood
by his Pontiac Sunbird.

Three hours later, Anibal Colon Torres, 29, was shot nearby, and neighbors
reported hearing more shots about an hour after that. But police didn't
find Jose luis Torres Davila's body -- with 11 crack vials around it --
until Saturday morning. He was shot three times in the head.

Police are also looking for a man who apparently shot three others in a car
with him in the mountain town of Aguas Buenas early Monday. The driver,
David Omar Santana Reyes, 23, and another unidentified passenger were
killed. The other passenger survived.

Until now, the bloodiest weekend this year was April 19-21 when 15 people
were killed. Not counting five deaths reported in the early hours of
Monday, officials reported 615 homicides in 2001, 60 more than the same
period last year.

About 62. percent of the homicides -- 385 cases -- were determined to be
drug-related. The causes for another 19. percent, or 117 deaths, are still
undetermined.

Most homicides in Puerto Rico, with a population of 3.8. million, have been
attributed to drugs since the late 1980s, when officials cracked down on
trafficking in South Florida, and the island became a springboard for drugs.

Thanks to Puerto Rico's 300-mile coastline and its proximity to Colombia
and the Dominican Republic, about 43 percent of the cocaine smuggled into
the United States in 1999 stopped on the island first.

The 1,760 pounds taken off a 32-foot speedboat in the southern town of
Guanica on Monday had a street value in excess of $150. million, officials
said. No arrests were made.

The struggle to keep drugs out is fought on many fronts. The U.S. Customs
Service arrested four passengers on the Carnival Destiny cruise liner
Sunday and charged them with drug smuggling after they found four kilos of
heroin among personal belongings.

Tighter security at airports has forced traffickers to find other ways to
do business. The U.S. Coast Guard and local police have stepped up patrols
on traditional routes to the island's west and southern coasts, so recently
more drugs were coming in from the north.

"Security may dissuade some organizations, but eventually they are going to
move their product somehow," said Waldo Santiago, public information
officer for the DEA's Caribbean office. "It's humanly impossible to seal
the borders 100 percent. The traffickers will keep adapting to the
security, and we'll adapt to them."